Hello, I'm Simon. Welcome to Simon's Cat logic. We'll be finding out from a cat
expert why cats behave the way they do. Today we're going to talk about catnip.
Catnip is a herb called a Nepeta which is cat mint. And, I brought
two of these plants for the garden and we're just watching my cats go
completely loopy over these plants. They ate the leaves and they rolled around on
top of them and they strip them of all their leaves. And, these poor plants were
decimated. So, what I had to do was buy another plant and then sort of rotate
them so give them one plant that they could chew it leave a few leaves on it
and then keep them in pots and give them another one while this one recovered and
have like a rotation system with these these poor plants. Because the cats would
be absolutely crazy with them. And, then I thought I've got to put this into a film
that this sort of obsession with cat mint.
Catnip is a perennial herb that comes from the plant cat mint. And, the scientific name for this is Napeta
Cataria. It's the chemical nepetalactone that causes the chemical response in the
brain in susceptible to cats. The behaviours that we see can vary so they may sort of
nibble or lick the Catnip. They may show rubbing behaviour like
Buddy's doing right now. And, they may also roll around on the floor and
show aspects of object play. Like nibble at it for example.
The effects of catnip are quite short-lived and don't seem to harm the cat at all.
Catnip can be used to rub on scratch posts to make them more appealing to cats. So, they're more likely to scratch them.
As you can take the leaves like this. Break them apart and rub them on the post.
Some cats respond to catnip and other
cats don't. It's thought between 50 to 75% of cats do respond to catnip cat.
Catnip can vary in both strength and quality which may also account as to why some cats
respond and others don't
Well, of all my four cats it was Maisy, the big grey tabby, who went absolutely
googoo over this cat mint I had in the garden. She was the one that used to
dribble and sit there for hours in her own little world chewing the leaves and
literally rolling around and around and in all the little shreds of leaf that
she'd chew up. She was absolutely crazy for this stuff. And, she was one that
really influenced that film that gave me the idea behind that.
you